At 9.50pm AEDT yesterday, there was a sudden spike in trading on the oil and S&P 500 futures market.
6.50am New York time is an unusual time for a rush on trades on West Texas Intermediate May futures.
But it showed that all of a sudden, a substantial sum of money was bet on oil prices dropping and the stock market rising.
The whole “futures market” thing is just legalised market manipulation and gambling on a global scale
For small an medium sized businesses, especially in agriculture, it has a real utility. Hedging commodities I need to buy to feed my animals has made the difference between break even and deep in the whole some years.
Yes there is market manipulation for some of these buyers, but I would say for the vast majority it is an asset in a very tight margin game. But I’m here producing a product and feeding into the whole economy, not just extracting resources and capital as some useless day trader.